The Chilean Experience: Struggling for the Right to the City in the Neoliberal Era

This project examines one particular civil society group’s efforts to contest the for-profit model of governance, to fight gentrification, and exert their right to space. The Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha (MPL), or Movement of Settlers in the Struggle, is a grassroots movement in Santiago, Chile. This is a social movement of urban poor residents who are confronting displacement that is being fostered by the public sector. Pobladores in Chile have traditionally been residents of urban working class communities experiencing housing insecurity (squatters, renters, indebted home-owners, etc.), and thus struggling with poverty. MPL was initiated in 2006 in the district of Peñalolen, and has since grown into a nationwide organization. It now consists of a strong network of poblador-led assemblies with a common vision for reclaiming their communities. MPL uses a slew of innovative mechanisms to confront an exclusionary urban planning paradigm, while reconstructing the collective political conscience of its base. MPL has grown since its formation seven years ago, and now consists of a strong network of poblador-led assemblies in many communities with a common vision for reclaiming their communities through innovative mechanisms of autonomy, while reconstructing the collective political conscience of the subaltern